Evening Star Newspaper, November 30, 1895, Page 21

= LIFE ON THE CANAL Pathetic Scenes Vividly Pictured by Pauline Pry. COMEDY AND RAGEDY MINGLED A Missionary's Life Work on the Towpath. ON BOARD MARINE CASTLES SPENT A DAY ON the canal recently, and now if there is any sort of human wretchedness or de- pravity left for me to see please don’t tell me where to tind it; I have seen enough. The center of my canal experience was ‘a mission Sunday school on the tow- path a mile above Aqued ct bridge. My companions were a missionary and her lit- tle girl. We were not a particularly lively looking procession as we trudged up Water street, the river running black and unfriendly be- side us, while a biting, cold wind showed as little respect fo. our gentle sex as did the operations of the long line of mills along which we had to pass, peek-a-booing with rolling barrels, flying shiagles and apolo- wizing for our existence in a tangle of horses, heavy wagons and busy men. To be perfect- ly honest, I was not happy on this excur- ston. Nor did attendant circumstances per- mit me any reason for believing anybody has any right to happiness in all this great, grudging, godless world. Let me tell you the story of how the mis- sionary came to start a Sunday s:hool on the canal, and I think that for the nonce, perhaps, even you, a.Philistine, vill fail to find perfect peace to a full stomach and a cloyed palate. Founding the Mission. Late one evening last summer this small gray missionary and her shadowy little girl dragged into my house, the most pitiful pair of human beings I ever saw. Both seemed shrunken to about one-half their usual dimensicns, which are considerably below the average ai their greatest; the woman's face that has the unquestioning wise eyes of one’s haby somehow set in the years of loving patience and endurance of one’s mother, was so white and wrinkled with exhaustion, her voice so faint, her fcotsteps so lagging, she looked ready to drop and die where she fell. The little girl was the least excuse for a soul to remain or. earth that you can imagine. She drift- ed in like a ghost, and her voice in the ef- fcrt of speaking was like the last breath of a wind dying in a whisper around a bleak corner. “What in the world have you been doing now?" I asked, and when the missionary told me that she had started a Sunday school re the canal for the children of the beatmef I climbed right up on the platform of my worldly experience and began to lecture. I told her that while the souls of these children doubtless needed attention, that It was well to remember that her body and that of her own child were not exempt —_——=~ The Missionary and Her Child. from the same necessity, that charity be- gan at Fome and that self-sacrifice such as she at that moment exemplified was noth- ing less sinful than suicide. The tears that trickled down the furrows in her cheeks while I preached didn't hinder me doing what I considered my duty as a reasonable then. She was too tired to talk back, and after supper she left me still peacocking over the part I had played in raising a jonary from the depths ef truction. The next day I had a note from the mis- sionary, and, to this land of plenty, can you believe what it told me?—that for six weeks she had been unable to get a scrap of work to do whereby she earns her daily bread, | and that for three weeks her allowance of bread for herself and child had grown so wretchedly insufficient that to keep from going mad sitting still in enforced idleness, hungry, she had gone up the canal, and in helping souls as near starvation as was her body had sought the fourth dimension of her needs that self-forgetfulness in others makes possible at times. The First Meeting. The, Sunday school she thus started held its first meetings on a couple of logs under the Aqueduct bridge. The class some days numbered sixty. Think of that many chil- dren companioning with mules on the canal! Seon the wife of a canal man who, deter- mined to educate her children, had taken a couple of rooms in an old frame building just to one side under the bridge, invited the missionary to hold meetings in the yard in front of her living room. This yard, that was nothing more than a piece of dirt, with a fence around it, was speedily made to bloom with a few flowers and shine with cleanliness, and here all summer long, while you, or yor or gayer ones than you, were rattling over the bridge above in pursuit of pleasure, realized chiefly in a headache next morning, this half-fed missionary was in- itlating her band of small social, outcasts into the “divine worship of sorrow,” and proving its sublime form with the cruel facts of her own life. ‘The Sunday exercises were supplemented by two meetings during the week, when the children were taught to read and sew. ‘These lessons speedily became the bright- est thing 11 canal life, and every boat car- rying «hildren triea to arcange its trips to make the most of this civilizing influence. There was one exception, however. One woran declined all invitations to have her four children come into the yard for les- 8 with the rest. No, indeed,” said she, as she stood in her marine castle, her tousled head out the window, framed in a dilapidated sunbon- net, a pipe between her teath—“no, indeed; I ain't goin’ to let no children of mine go into that woman's yard. I ain't come to that, thank you, ‘sociatin’ with them as has a landlord standin’ at their door every montn—no, indeed! Thus, you see, caste obtains even in ca- fe, and according to its canons thos eon rented property do not rank in the social swim with those who own their homes. While canal men pay $15 per trip for their boat, this is not for the privilege of residence, but for the wear and tear of the commercial use It serves. The home ig thrown in, and when the boats are tied up during the winter the families may live on in them without charge. A Room Finally Secured. When the weather grew cold this fall, a man who owns a string of mills in the vi- einity of the canal, grateful to the mis- sionary for the influenee her presence ex- ercised upon the hardened sinners sur- rounding him, offered her a room in a de- serted mill that fronts on the towpath nearly opposite Georgetown University. Thither we were bound, and after we had gotten within a stone's throw of the build- ing, while i wis not at all hilarious, being so far removed from clvilization into the bosom of canal life, I did not full horror of the situation un’ THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1895—TWENTY-FOUR PAGES, 21 expected mules, and I am _ sufficiently versed in the obstinancy of men that I felt prepared to meet and conquer mules. But this strange beast that was advancing up- on us with constantly increasing rapidity— my screams awok the echoes of the his- toric hills about, and then—what? Well, what would you have done? There was the river on one side and the canal on the other, and an awfully cold day for a plunge into either. Yet the infuriated animal came cn, and but for the bravery of the mis- sionary there would doubtless be today a nanny goat cn the canal afflicted with a bad conscier ce and a worse digestion, while I—I would not be writing this story. The courageous missionary shooed at nanny, who responded by pausing in her mad ca- reer to stand on her hindlegs and wave at me with her front feet, whereupon, with another scream of terror, I dashed up to the towpath and was saved. A noble ca- nal man, hearing my cry for help, ran gown and literally sat upon nanny, thus holding her fast until we had escaped into the Sunday school room. The Sunday School Room. This room is part of a building where cannon balls were manufactured during the war of 1812. The building has twice fallen in, and when a man from one of tie mills dcwn the ey was helping the m:ssionary clean up the other day he told her she'd better not step with her “whole heft” when she walks across the floor or it’s likely to fall in again. This lent an element of uncertainty to iife more spicy than pleas- ant, which, however, did not begin to ap- peal to me as did th> isolaticn in which we three weak and unprotected females were established. According to all reports I had heard canal men are not just the com- papions a woman would choose to accom- pany her into a wilderness, and here we were, utterly removed from all other human beings. I know the fearless spirit of the mis- sicrary in-overcoming wrong wherever she encounters -it, and a wretched after- thought, now that we were settled on the bank of the raging canal with a day ahead A Tyne. among the peculiar society it affords, I said faintly: “I hope you haven’t made any ene- mies up here.” Before the missionary could answer there was a rap at the door, and there stool my answer—a feature whose petticoats b2- tokened femininity, but whose voice and eyes were certainly the devil's. “Be you the woman that took John —'s girl away from him?” she asked. “I'm the same woman,” said the mis- sionary. “Well, he’s sick and dead sorry he’s done so bad, and he says if you'll come up to Quackenbush’s alley about 7 o'clock this evening he thinks you kin convert him afore he dies.” The missionary expressed great sorrow to hear of John's condition, and sent him a bundle of tracts, bidding the girl tell him to read those till she got there. But when the girl was gone the missionary laughed and sald John would have to die uncen- verted if he waited for her to go to Quackenbush’s alley to save him. ‘He and his father and a brother have all three sworn to have my life,"’ she said, “‘and they are constantly sending such messages to me, hoping to get me into their hands.” This was cheerful for a beginning of our day, and, with quaking nerves, I begged to know what she had done to John. “Why, soon after I began work up here last summer a girl came to me and asked me to get her away from a man with whom she had been living on the canal for five years. During all that time she had worked like a dog, and he had never given her a cent of money. She was dressed in rags, and said that the winter previous, while the boat was tied up, she had worked on a farm and gone barefooted all winter, John collecting and appropriating her wages. I promised to provide some piace to take her, and was to see her the next time the boat was in. The following Sun- day—we were having our mission school under the bridge then—no children were on hand when I got to the bridge, so I started up the towpath to drum them up. I had sent a number down, and, with Ruthie, started further on to a boat that was tied | up just below the mill here, quite a dis- tance from the others. As I was almost there I heard screams, and a woman’ voice crying, ‘Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, while a man's voice was answering, “ you dirty dog, die.’ on the towpath and dashed on the I put my head in the window I saw a beating—well, you couldn’t tell hardly what he was beating, the poor thing was so cov- | ered with blood. “You let that woman alone,’ I cried; ‘I'll have ten police here in a moment,’ I said, and at the sound of my voi brute looked up and cursed me and said he would kill me in the bargain, if I didn't | get out of his way. I ran back to Ruthie and then saw three men standing the other side of a bunch of mules tied just above. “For the love of heaven,’ I said, ‘don’t let that man kill that woman.” “It's his woman and his boat,’ said they; : 1 ‘tain’t none o’ our business.” “Then I took Ruthie by the hand, and back we went on the boat. The man instantly rushed upon us, and grabbing me by the shoulder, said, with uplifted hand, “D— you once! Now I'm going to give you just three chances to get off this boat and out Warding Off a Chill. ‘n my way, and if you don't quit, I'll duck you as sure as I'm a livin’. D—n you twice! D—n you—’ he started the third time, and I jerked away from him, de- manding, ‘Who and what are you that you dare lay hands on me? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command you let me be." The bully actually let go of me and stepped back a step, but said again, ‘You get off this b or I'll duck that gal o° yourn if I don’t you.’ I then stepped back on the gang plank, and was insisting that he stop abusing the woman, when quick as a flash he had hold of the end of the gang plank, and I tell you Ruthie and I had to jump lively. We landed on the towpath with a thud, precisely the same moment that the plank went down with a splash. They have a long pole with a hook on the end of it, for getting the plank when it goes down, and as he set about this the woman had struggled to her feet and put her head out the window. = don’t you know me?’ she irl that was askin’ you take me away from this man.’ Sure enough it was Annic, but such a sight! Two of her teeth were knocked in, her face was drip- ping with blood, her clothes were half torn off her, and everywhere her flesh showed, it was’ cut and bleeding. ‘Can you jum Annie,’ I said, ‘if you can, jump and Ill take you now.’ “Yes, I've jumped that often, and I can now,’ the girl replied, ‘and started up out of tks house. The three men standing to one sde, had come to the front when I left Ruthie standing | e the | the man trizd to duck me, and now they were ready to defend me.’”” “ ‘He'll not touch you again, Annie,’ I called to her, as the man turned to head her off. He saw that we were now five against him, and so began to coax the girl not to go; then when sae moved right slong, he bade her wait till he put down the plank if she would go. She had barely stepped foot on it, when, quick as a cat, the man had hold of the end, and I screamed, ‘Jump, Annie, he’s going to duck you.’ She did jump, just as Ruthie and I had done, and again the plank went down with a splash. I went with the girl up to the police station and we had the man ar- rested. The next morning in the Police Court he told a tale of such wonderful virtue and forbearance on nis part, and such dreadfuit doings of Annie, that Judge Miller said: ‘Well, I guess, John, you'd bet- ter go up for sixty days just to get a rest from such an awfuliy bad woman.’ He served his term; meanwhile I had placed Annie out of his rewch in a heme down in Virginia, and ever since he has been free J as Li€a sending ne such tokens of 2 “im os came th’s morning, varied with threats of violence. You can fancy this recital of life, as she lived on the canal, was not calculated to increase my confidence in my surround- ings. The missionary’s room, moreover, was in itself assurance that the world, to which I hang by faith, was something apart, and all its provisions for peace of mind and creature comtort counted naught in this strange order of existence. A Woman's Touch. The touch of home that a woman's love is somehow empowered to give a barren place here betokened a love so impersonal as to have its clearest rendering written in the inscription above the door: ‘ome unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The blessed little gir! who is home anywhere that want, sor- row and sin make an abiding place for her mother's service of humanity, went about singing softly to herself; yet fraught with sacredness as was this room wherein I was the only inharmonious element, I may as well frankly confess I was none the less scared. Every once in a while there would ke a kind of swishing sound, and perhaps a clanking of chains outside, and the mis- sionary would exclaim, “There comes a boat,”” and would run to the door, I follow- ing, wondering if this one would take off our dead bodies or would it be the next. On a Canal Bont. These canal beats are about seventy-five feet long, with two low-roofed cabins, one at either end, each about twelve feet square. In one are housed the mules and in the other the man and wife and chil- dren. Ten days are occupied in ‘the trip, which extends from the navy yard in Washington to Cumberland. At each place the boat tles up for two or three days to load or unload. This affords the women and children a measure of liberty, out they sull remain a class apart. The society of the submerged has its distinctions and un- written laws as iron-bound as those above administered by Midas and Mrs. Grundy, and in this society, which is literally out of sight, canal folks are counted a degree lower then the lowest that live on land. I saw one of the canal children black and blue, as far as her flesh was visible, from a pounding she had been y school children from the toughest part of George- town, who resented the little girl’s attempt to go to school, and sought by beating to teach her to keep the place that according to their social scheme is on the canal and nowhere else. The towpath Is the only bit of ground where these children feel they have a business right to be, and when the boats are tied up the mules take so inuch of this narrow space that the very beasts of the field seem to combine with all hu- manity above to crowd the litde folks cf the canal back on the bad-smelling, close- contined boats, the decks of which offer such an uncertain playground that the children play there staked like cattle. They wear a leather band around the waist, which fastens them by a long rope to a staple on the boat. They sleep in this har- ness in summer, when families, as a rule, make their beds on deck. Yet, despite this precaution, canal children are constantly drowning. Six have been lost this way since last June. Ds Pauline Pry Goes Aboard. In order to change the mules from the towpath on one side to the other, a boat tied up in front of the missionary'’s door, and with great trepidation I went aboard. 1 did not. go down into the jaunty cabin. I could not. There isn’t sulphur nor Tur- kish baths enough in the world to ever put me on good terms with myself again had I |done so. This room, twelve feet square, had a bed across one end part way, and hung over this was another bed. Extending the rest of the way across was something built Ike a closet, which contained another bed, the partitioning forming the frame, the occupants crawling in through a small door. In the niche on the side which this closet bed made was a cook stove on which | grease and onions were frying. A locker jon the other side, with four children and a great raw-boned woman, constituted the remainder of the furniture at the time of my visit. A Snmple Canal © “You dear old soul; I'm ter: ron. ble glad to was the heariy greeting the wo- | y, taking her pipe } out of her mouth and spitting with good jaim out the small window. She wore a | sun bonnet that looked as if it also served | the purpose of a night cap, and in spite o | the cold day, her dress waist was | by but two buttons at the waist and op. ed from there to the throat to 1 torming the maternal function | months’ old baby as Little trouble as po. ble. | “Didn't 1 get a scare comin’ down trip," she said. “You see Joe in therey” We had not seen Joe, but being | directed by her* motion, now perceived a | boy about eight years old under the cov | of the closet bed. r | “We wuz about three miles this side of | | thi Cumberland when I see that brat go off | “There's Joe ducked,’ I. ‘He's divin’,’ says pop. ‘He ain't divin’, ‘He is divin’,’ says pop. Then says ivin’ I'll dive.’ an’ I duv. Down and sure’s as he's a red-headed, good-for-nuthin’ brat, there he was on the boitom, his hands dug tight in the mad, stiflin’ like a blamed fool. I yanked him up sudden, I kin tell you, and brought him up | and slung hk. at pop, yin’ “That's how he was divin’.” We roiled him over a mighty sight afore the water come out'n | bim, and now he ain't feelin’ good for much j yet, but he’s a liv! I never did believe in these folks as have their hearts broke and go snivelin’ around to make others miserable. You see, I might ha’ been sit- tin’ by a corpse this minit and carryin’ on to kill if I hadn’t up and hustled that brat back where he belongs, and I reckon if oth- er folks'd do more hustlin’ and less hanjsin* back and hollerin’ we all’d get along a heap easier; ain't that so?” Nobody could dispute this philesophy, first, lecause it is sound, and als the canal lady uttering it looked able to back up every word che spoke. It was only a few minutes’ work changing the mules, and we therefore made a call, fashionable as to pcint of duration, and then went ‘1p the road a bit to visit a charity, the like of which you never saw. A Hospital for Cats. It is a hospital for cats, and is located in a negro shanty, on the river. The founder and sole sustainer of this charity was just coming home as we approached. He is a dirty, dilapidated colored boy about fifteen years (ld. He grinned from ear to ear, rec- ognizing the missionary. “Bringing home another,” he said, and drew from inside his coat the worst-looking cat that ever hung onto the last thread of a cat's ninth life. It was bitten and chewed and bloody and blear-eyed and tailless. “Doan’ know how it Is, lady,” the boy kind of apologized to me, “but I jest can’t see one o’ them poor things suffer.” Then he showed me into his hospital, where were all sorts and conditions of cats in various stages of disease and convales- cence. That hoy never passes by a suffer- ing cat, but has his clothes provided with most remarkable sort of cat-ambulance pockets, and the missionary told me she has seen him coming home, the funniest-looking figure, all his pockets filled with sick and reedy cat From h inter the water. © we set cut dowa the townath to visit such boats as might be in. At the missionary’s door in passing we were in- tercepted by a cause for reconstructing the common belief that this is an ungrateful workl. “How do vou do, Carrie, whe come from?” said the misstonai girl to whom she spoke burst out crying, saying: “I came from badness lady, but T wanted to bring you this,” extending a leather hand bag. “’Deed you needn't be afraid to touch It, for I bought {it with clean money—money I earned washing, and I want you to take it so as to have come- thing to let you know I'm thankful to you for all you've done for me, an’ if I can ever get over loving that man I'll live square, lady—indeed I will; but it tain’t no use tryin’ now—I can’t help it—truly I can't.” 4 - The misstonary cent the poor thing away feeling, that bad a3 she was or could be, there was one, yes, two—the missionary and a God—who would patiently wait for her and love her.; Chills Unison. The first boat #@ came to presented a picture as comic as it was pathetic. Sit- ting in a row out in the sun, bundled in all kinds of rags, Wene\ffne children, each one just a little smail40 Mian the next, down to a mere baby, ami_every last one of them was having a chill. Some were pretty near through shaking;|cthers had just begun; but all nine were-att in pitiful earnest. “B-b-bad weather f-f-for ch-chills,” sald the mother, coming! out, shaking also. ‘The missionary told us that these canal folks have ague the year around, partly due, she thinks, to what they eat. In their A Cheerless Crowd. close quarters they rarely provide a set meal, as even poor people elsewhere do. They “piece {t”—bread and ‘lasses, or bread and pork drippings with canal water for the children to drink, and whisky for the men and women. We learned on this boat that the woman who had stood out against the Sunday school because of her aristo- cratic prejudice against associating with people who have a landlord over them, had died at the hospital the night previous. Walking on up the path, the missionary said, “There is the widower.” The Widower. ‘The seriously wretched and pathetic con- dition of these people was nearly lost on me in the somewhat comical aspect they each and all presented. This widower when we sighted him was staking his mule on the towpath, and he, too, had chills. There he stood, shaking like an aspen leaf in front of the mule that was looking earnest- ly into his face, “winking his eyebrows at the man,” the missionary's little girl said, and shaking his tail in sympathetic accord with the man’s malaria and general mis- fortune. After getting around on the safe side of the mule—that is the farthest possible from his heels—the missionary spoke with the man about his bereavement, and though his wife had been known to be one of the most hardened cases on the canal, the mission- ary said with a discouraged sigh, that ex- pressed more than her words, for charity’s sake attempted: yell, I hope the poor woman Is better ft. “I d-d-dunno,” responded the honest hus- band. “If heaven’s all it's painted up to be, ‘taint likely she'll get much of a show there.” I startec to go with the missionary on the rext boat, but the sight and smell that greeted me were too much for my unre- generated senses, and I retreated, where I still saw and couldn’t help hearing what went on there. 1 ‘The missionary had been carrying a great roll of linen rags to give to a girl with a cancer if she happened to be in, and there she was—one of the most awful thi prying eyes have ever looked upon. She uncovered he: face, which was literally eaten up with a cancer. ‘The missionary ;spoke of an effort she had been making to get this girl, who is cnly sixtecn years of age, into the Home for Incurables. She lives in this hoat wit a sister, and docs the cooking and helps Icok after the six children of this family. The sister opposed the idea of taking the girl away. “Wh Pep. died, ago, she w Able'to do x payin’ the burviy up expe and little ‘nough she can do‘to stay.on with me, now she's got hig enough te kelp Work and mind the children. “ET doan’ k Spoke up the husband, deliberately n’ know but she better go. I'm géttin’ tired & this am.” “T don’t th vw,” unswered the wife, ‘*'tain't so tand most anything after ied with the man's tthe mi ry = i Se | Sympathy. vied against any further revela- of life on the canal that were as un- le as that. was but one other boat in, and In this we found a solitary younsster about eighteen years old looking green with ague, and gloomy with discouragement. His cap- tain is a_man who was formerly a book- keeper. Failing eyesight drove him to give up his work, and, thinking that in boating on the canal was an opportunity for a sober and intelligent man to make money, he hired a boat. He had returned the day be- fore and pocketed $118 as the profits of his first trip. Late that night he went up to a saloon in Georgetown to bring out 1 ‘ who was in there drunk, and while there a man offered him a bill, had lost it. The cantaiu thoight rot, but on the man’s insisting. drew out his roll to see, and—the same old game. Neither his money nor the man had b ven since. While the boy was tale of woe into the missionary infinite distress, a perfect swarm of the raost dis- reputabic looking negroes was coming out of an old building near the towpath to- ward us. We were now a bit below Aque- duct bridge, and within screaming distance of civilization, or T am sure I -ion’t know what I should have done. “Got any papers left {eday?" these fright- ful creatures asked, and the m’ssionary bestowed upon them a load of tr: Bay-colored pictures. “Two hundred of!those creat that old mill,” she tojd me—“sleep there like maggots on a cheese, and do their cook- ing in old coal scuttles. In simmer the stench from the place is so sickening that inured as T am to repulsive things I cannot stand it to go by there?” Next we went Hack toward the bridge, and rapped at the door of a frame house. A girl with a mild faee and gentle voice greeted us, and coming’after her at the top of the stairs, making'4ts way with diffi- a baby, two years old, the girl d. THe baby has no father, ard the pair, with, thé girl's mother, live in one room is like a barn, not so decent, doubtless, as your barn, or yours, and wretehedly cold us the day was they had not a bit of fire ‘In the room. The baby was blue with thé cold. I have seen cold babies before in my life, but some- hew this one, with its tiny blue hands, that were like small pieces of ice in mine, cut into my very heart and consciousness, the common fact that a baby was cold—cold today, tonight, tomorrow--cold the whole winter through—and here its mother bear- ing above the burden of her own wants, this simple, cruel fact, her baby cold. Do you know I am such a heathen I had never been able to see the common sense of bothering about the poor until this cold baby taught me? v "re wretched, the poor are, to he sure, but so am I, and the whole thing fs Their animal wants are han my wants of another sort, sc what's the use of fu bout them, Wretched?) We're all wretched. “Let us leave th> poor to their luck. Goodness knows we do well if we look after our- selves, This is about the logic on which I have been wont to rise superior to cold babies and wretched women, avowirg missionary werk to be meddlesome. “You disturb the harmony of their wretchedness,” I have said, “and, relieving one* want, only intro- duce them to another probably more diffi- cult to bear.” Now, however, I saw sounder logic in red flannel than in any system of philosophy Possible to be applied to the poor. I saw not only a baby made comfortable, but a mother relieved of the necessity to sin. When her child is hungry, freezing, when those com- mon, every-day animal wants that anybody but the poor can supply are crying out in a woman's baby, and in her own body; when work is not to be had without a ‘“‘character’’ that warrants its bestowal and the poor are destitute even of the right to labor, does not a penny turned at a vice become the sole resource-a woman has, and with whom does the sin rest—her, in too deliberate vice, or us, in our deliberate ignorance of her needs? “Please don’t talk such dreadful things,” said a good woman of whom I begged some clothing for this baby. “I am so nervous, it makes me fairly sick to hear about the poor.” A Canal Romance. Possibly you are no less nervous, so'I’l} tell you a pretty romance of canal life, in which the wealthy and respectable play the promi- nent part and the poor cut a very, very small figure indeed. I shent the evening in Georgetown the day following my picnic on the canal, and I was full of the subject, which somehow failed to 1. roduce in my hostess any degree of the enthusiasm it has aroused in me. Later dufing the evening a number of others had dropped in, and I wandered from the draw- ing room into the library, with the son of the family, a man between thirty-five and forty, whose state of single blessedness I have often made the subject of jest. “Your canal reminiscences were not awfully pepu- lar as a matter of conversation; did you notice it?" he said. “Come with me, and I'll show you the reason why.” lie took me into a small recom, his bach- elor’s den, opening off the library, and, Fointing to a skull grinning on the wall ore his desk, said: “That's the reason there.” Then he told me his story. When he was a youngster attending Georgetown Coliege he discovered one day a pretty little girl on ene of the carnal bouts—a littie girl with soft, yellow curls, and big, brown eyes, that were wistful with an inborn longing for some- thing different from the life she knew. The days that this girl's boat was tied up near the bridge grew to ve the best days of his week, and gave color to all he did and hoped. He pegged away at school for dear life, his boyish dream being to get through college, and go to work so that he could send this girl to school, educate and marry her. Then the report reached his mother’s ears that he was a devoted attendant of a girl on the canal. “You can fancy what followed,” he said. “We haven't much of anything left in our family but blood, and didn’t the bones of my ancestors rattle in the awful war my mother made upon me! That I wanted to marry the girl was infinitely worse to her mind than if I had wanted anything else of her. I was finally given my choice between never seeing my mother again nor stepping foot inside my home and never seeing the girl again. I hadn't got it clear in my mind just which I had the heart to do—kill my mother or tie girl, for quitting either meant the same to each—ard as much from habit as anything, I drifted down to the canal one evening and, of course, souzht to know-if her boat was in. it was, and in that wretch- ed closet bed that you described with so much feeling this evening my little girl was sick—half dead with fever. I arranged for her to be carried to the hospital, and went home, to find my mother sick also—she seemed to have some sort of crazy percep- tion that the case had gone against her, and in every way that a clever and deter- mined woman can devise she managed to Keep me by her side the next day and the next night. The next morning I told her plainly that T was going, why I was going and where. I went to the hospital and—they do such things with dispatch, you know, when it's only a little girl, and nobody in- terested—she was dead, and I could find no trace of her. Two nights later I found her on the dissecting table of a medical school, and J brought this skull home to my mother. She has never set foot in this room since the skull has been hanging there. She avoids the library for fear she will get a glimpse of it. But she forgot it entirely last winter, or else thought five years were sufficient to make me forget it, and urged ™my marriace with a girl who was visiting here. I said nothing, but brought her to this door. Needlessly cruel of me? There's a feeling in my heart that the world’s need- lessly cruel,” the man finished, and who will contradict him? Certainly not PAULINE PRY. Sa eS IN SORROW, NOT IN ANGER. Dunraven Will Re Sufficiently Pun- ished by His Own Conduct. From Life. Let us call Lord Dunraven no more hard names than {s absolutely necessary. His case is ove that may be more adyantage- y dealt with in sorrow than ir anjger. Hie seems to most of us a wrong-headed m, who had, to be sure, some hard but who brought the worst of his sporting misfortunes down by his own un- wisdom on his own head. He seems still to be piling 3p troubles on himself, and he the discipline he may need. ‘here are plenty of good sportsmen in England who have shown that they have tried hard to judge Dunraven'’s conduct and his charges and complaints on their merits, and not a few of them have cen- red his course. It is worth some time nd pains to convince such men, if possible, that their representative yachtsman got jest and sportsmanlike treatment here, and that such of his misfortunes as were not due to bad luck are attributable to his own folly. It is difficult to carry so much con- Viction so far across the seas, but with the earl’'s own a: tance, which seems to be singularly efficient, it may possibly be done. pe SHE HAD BEAUTIFUL FEET. Because Her Parents Were Wise Fnonugh to Let Them Grow. From the New York Tribune. “What a dear little foot!” remarked a wo- man of the world, admiring the tiny foot of a little two-year-old. “Now, you must al- ways keep her shoes a little snug and she'll have pretty feet when at all,” sald papa, with emphasis, happily more sensible. “We'll let her foot develop precisely as the Lord intended, and perhaps when she’s a woman it may be pretty, after an.” So this wise father sought out the best bootmaker in the city, a high-priced per- son, as befitted one who put good material into good shape and charged a good sum for his intelligent workmanship. The boot- maker Was commissioned io make Miss Baby's shoes from the measurements of her own dimpled feet ins of the hit or miss ready-made fit which is generally the fate of infancy. : Year by year as the little feet changed in size and shape, the bootmaker’s measure- ments altered to suit their individuality. Winter and summer the walking boots were of calfskin, laced to keep the ankles slim, pliable for comfort, yet strong enough to support the soft bones and prevent in after years that unsightly bulge near the instep which ruins many a slippered foot after party days arrive. —+0+-— Pensive Penciling: From the Somerville Journal. When a young business man gets his first check book he usually has a tendency to get one with pictures in it. After he has been in business for a while he learns that nobody ever looks at anything on a check but the amount for which it is drown and the signature. The man who never votes is very often the man who complains the loudest about the poor quality of the men who are elect- ed to public office. Sometimes it takes nine tailors to make aman, and a lawyer-to make him pay. ‘fo some people it has alivays secmed odd that the theaters don’t have a caudy coun- ter connected with the box office, and 80 get the full benefit of the matinee girl's trade. There are always two sides to a story— the outside and the inside. ——__+e+_____ Entitled to Consideration. From the Chicago Record. Hotel Clerk—“See here, now, on off this veranda.” Joras Deadbeat—“‘Ain’t dis yero place for guests o’ de ‘ouse?”” “Exactly.” “Dat’s all right, den—de cook’s Jes’ gimme a hand-out!” you move LIBRARIES IN AMERICA. Growth of the System and the Method Followed in England. G. W. Smaliey in London Times. The Engilshman, it is said, is not a book buyer, but a book borrower. the reverse has hitherto been the case. THE ADMIRAL’S PEDOMETER. It Recorded Such Curious Activity as to Be Early Retired. From Pearson's Weekly. One of her majesty’s cruisers lay at In America | anchor in the harbor of Havana, and the temparture of that port in July was not There have been few facilities for borrow-| conducive to persistent activity—on the irg books, at least the books which peopie| Part of the junior watch officers, at any want to read, and so genuine booksellers have been a necessity. Why circulating libraries have not long ago made headway rate. In fact, a comfortable armchair seemed exactly to fit the exigencies of the watch, in New York or Boston is not altogether | @fter the captain and the admiral Hhd turn- clear. Probably the cheapness of reprinted ‘novels, combined with the natural spending proclivities of Americans, militates against their chances. In England when all noveis were issued in three-volume form it was practically impossib:e to read them except by the aid of Mudie’s; but in proportion as the original price of a book is lowered the function of a circulating library disappears. In America there were not enough copy- right ncvels to support the three-volume system prior to the international act of 1691, and now that the system is being dis- carded kere it is hardly likely to make fresh headway in the United States. For a circulating library to be successful its sub- seribers must live within a certain radius; otherwise the cost of carriage makes the process of exchanging books too expensive. In America the distances are so vast that Mudie’s brary could never have served the whole country. They must have e@tablished branches in allethe great centers of population, and the expense and time occupied in keeping their depots supplied and organized would have made the business unprofitable. Some idea of the difficulty even now of supplying books in large quantities to the far-off western states may be formed from the fact that it is not uncommon for New York pub- lishera to send consignments to the Pacific coast round Cape Horn, and that it is usual to allow a month or six weeks for transit by freight trains to the same destination. During the last few years, however, the gap caused by the absence of circulating libraries has begun to be filled by the pub- lic Hbraries which have sprung into exist- erce in nearly every large city. At the present time there are over 500 of these public libraries, which are regarded as standing sufficientiy high to be entitled to gratuitous copies of all the United States government publications, and the number is constantly iner8asing. Most of these Libraries have a reference department and a dending epartment. But the lending departments are much more enterprising and up-to-date than those of similar English institutions. They lay themselves out to meet the requirements of the citizens. When a new book is in de- mand it is not considered a sufficient an- Swer to reply that it is “out,” and leave you to solace yourself with one of the old ™asters. The Ame! n librarian considers it his duty to supply enough copies. to give reasonable Satisfaction to his clients. For instance, one librarian informed us that he had bought thirty copies of Trilby, sixteen or seventeen of Marcella, and so on. Of ee many English lbraries could this be said? ——se0- HE WAS REBUFFED And His Yearnings for Womanly Sym- pathy Scorned and Blighted. From the Detroit Free Press. I was going down to Staten Island the other Saturday afterncon on a crowded ferryboat and it happened that I got a seat next to a man about sixty years old, who scon let me know that his home was in central New York. We had talked for a bit when he said to me: “Stranger, I rather like yer looks and I want to sorter unbosom myself to you.” I told him that I would preserve and re- spect his confidence, and he continued: “My wife died about seven y’ars ago.” yes, I took you for a widower.” “When she died I thought I'd never git married agin, but I've kinder changed my mind about it. If I could find jest the right sort o’ woman I think I'd enter the chains of matrimony agin. I believe they call it the chains, don’t they?” “Yes, it is sometimes referred to in that way. Can't you find the right sort of wo- man up your way?” “No, can't find her. Thar’s some Id like, but they don’t want me, and some wan me that I wouldn't marry nohow. It's purty hard to git jest the sort o° woman you want. I've bin tryin’ fur three years and haven't found her yit.” “Did you think you might pick one up down here?” I asked. “Say! that’s what brung me down here!” he whispered in reply. “It jest struck me that I'd hev my pick of thousands here in New York. Fact is, I followed a woman onto the boat who jests fills my eye. That's her a sittin’ over thar by the fat weman.” ‘The womaa pointed out seemed to me to be an old maid and a kicker, and so far as lcoks went she was the homeliest woman on the boat. I was surprised at the old man’s choice, but said nothing to that effect. is “Yes, she’s my idea of what a second wife orter be,” he said, as he rubbed his. hands together, “but how am I goin’ to git to speak to her?” “There’s a vacant stool beside her. Go over and sit down and take occasion to say. you are a stranger and ask her to give you information about this or that. She m: be very pleasant or she may rebuff you. “I think I'll do it,” he said, as he got up and felt to see if his necktie was all mght. I moved away at the time and didn’t see him again for ten minutes. Then I ran across him in the cabin, tucked away in a corner and looking very pale-faced and perturbed. “Well, how did you come out?" I queried. “Sa, What did you say she might do to me?" he asked. “I said she might rebuff you. Did she?” ‘tranger, I'm not quite sartin of it, but I think she did—I think she did!’ he sol- emnly replied. “I sot down beside her and said I was a stranger, and asked her how high the Statter of Liberty was, and she swiped me over the head with her parasol and got some fellers to slam me around and run me in here. Yes, I kinder think she rebuffed me, and she kin go to grass "ea hanged to her!" ninless, but Not Profitable. From the Chicago Tribune. = The dentist was torturing his victim in the usual double fashion. The story he was telling at that moment was on himself. “wifen I was young in the profession,” said he, “I was working in a country place for a few weeks to help a friend. One day a farmer came in—a big, muscular chap, full biooded—one of the sort whose teeth come like the roots of oak trees. “As he sat in the chair, he asked, ‘Will it hurt?" “Fecling In rather a jocular mood, I an- swered, ‘Well, if it doesn’t it shan’t cost you anything.’ Then I fell to work. “The tooth came even harder than I ex- pected, so as the man got up from the chair and pulled himself together—he had not ut- tered a sound—I said, ‘Well, did it hurt?” - ‘Not a bit,’ answered the countryman, and strode out of the office, leaving me minus a fee, completely nonplused, and the laughing stock of my friend and the two or three patrons who sat about the office. “I have never tried to be funny profes- sionally since.” said he, meiitatively. Ae eich Experienced. From the Somerville Journal. Sarcastic Reader—“I noticed that you had a@ communication in the first number of your paper signed “Old Subscriber. Editor—“Well, that was all right.” Sarcastic Reader—“‘How so?" Editar—““Why, that communication was written by a man who began subscribing to different papers and magazines more than thirty years ago.” coo Had a General Idea. From the Chicago Tribune. “My paw’'s goin’ into the chicken raisin’ business,” said Johnny. “He's goin’ down town tomorrow to Luy an incubus, or an fudicetor, I forget which you call it.” ——_+e-+—____ A Fall. From the Detroit Tribune. The sun shone wermly. “Oh, I'll take a fall ou* of you,” he ex- claimed, addressing the months of October, November and the first few days of De- cember. ——_- ++ ____. Affection Not Too Ardent. Brom the Somerville Journal. Caller—“I suppose you love your new sister very dearly, Tommy?” Tommy (eyeing the baby coldly—‘Yes. But I'd @ good deal rather have a dog.” ed in. One morning the mail brought a small square box to the admiral, and that even- ing he gave a small round instrument, re- sembling a timepiece, to the junior watch officer, saying: “Mr. Marline, carry this with you on your watch, and pass it along to your relief with similar instructions.”” Marline put the machine in his pocket, and commenced to stroll to and fro until the admiral retired. Then he stretched himself out-in his chair, and, lighting a cigarette, began to watch the lights go ovt, one by one, om shore. Next morning Lieuts. Marline, Mainhold and Lazarette stood before the admiral. “Gentleme said that officer, sternly, “I have examined this little instrument,which you tell me was carried by you three gen- tlemen in succession on your respective watches, and I am astonished to find that, althouga I set it at zero last evening, it now records only two and a half miles. Gentlemen, I do not propose to condemn you on the unsupported testimony of a pedometer, and I must confess that, know- ing you to be ambitious and diligent offi- cers, I am loath to trust an apparent rec- ord so far below tha actual requirements. However, I shall ask you to carry the in- strument again tomorrow evening. Gen- tlemen, you are excused.” Lieut. Mainhold had the first watch that evening, and as soon as the admiral had gone to his cabin he seated himself in the arm chair and ordered Midshipman Rat- line to appear before him. “Ratline,” said the lieutenant, “when you went ashore today you absented yourself without permission for half an hour.” “Aye, aye, sir.” “You doubtless imagined that I intended to overlook your offense.” “I hoped so, sir.” fot at all. You must take this instru- ment and shake it violently for four hours, and I shall say no more about it.” The morning after, the same three officer again stood before the admiral. “Gentlemen,” said he, “I fear I have mis- judged you. I find, on examining the pedo- meter this morning, that it records a dis- tance of eighty-nine miles, walked by you three gentlemen in twelve hours. It is evi- dent | that the machine is utterly worth- Jess,” and a sharp splash was heard as the pedometer struck the limpid water of the bay. “Gentlemen, you are excused.” o+___ A Universal Law. From the Cincinnati Enquirer. “For the life of me, colonel, I don’t see why you persist in maintaining that whisky is of any value in the cure of snake bites. Why, all the modern scientists—" “Young man,” answered Col. Bluegrass, turning purple, “it stands to reason, sah, that g00d whisky, being beneficial in every other complaint, must be of benefit in snake bites. When there is a universal law in nature, sah, it does not vary for a mere snake, sah.” ——+0+_____ Luck With Disaster. From the Fliegende Blaetter. “So, now my masterpiece is completed And uow, if I could only find a purchaser, “What a magnificent ‘Sun- This I'll buy et any price.” Lord Gay rider,’